A House Republican lawmaker blocked a $19.1 billion disaster aid package on Friday, delaying passage of relief for disaster affected areas across the country.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) voted to block the legislation, which has the support of President Trump and passed the Senate on Thursday.
Only one vote was needed to defeat the motion because House lawmakers left town Thursday morning, before Senate negotiators reached a compromise on the bill. With members absent, leaders had hoped to pass the measure by unanimous consent.
Following the objection, the House ended its session.
The House is set to have another “pro forma” session — one with few lawmakers present — on Tuesday, at which time they plan to again try to pass the legislation by unanimous consent. Asked whether he would object again on Tuesday, Roy said: “We’ll see.”
House lawmakers are not due back in Washington until June 3.
Roy’s objection further delays legislation that would send aid to victims of Western wildfires, Midwestern flooding and hurricanes that hit the Southeast and Puerto Rico, as well as to other disaster-affected areas across the country.
[Senate approves deal on disaster aid, leaves out Trump’s border money]
The package does not include the more than $4 billion in U.S.-Mexico border funding the Trump administration requested. That demand had proved contentious, and leaving it out sidestepped a fight over immigration that had further complicated the delicate disaster-aid negotiations.
With the border funding provision stripped out, the Senate voted 85 to 8 to advance the bill Thursday. Hours later, Trump wrote on Twitter it had his approval.
The disaster-aid bill has been pending since last year, and the slow pace of talks has frustrated lawmakers of both parties, especially as past disaster bills have often been bipartisan and rarely featured the delays or rancor that has accompanied this one.
For much of that time, the main sticking point has been a struggle between Democrats — who pushed for more aid to Puerto Rico — and Trump, who has spent months complaining about fiscal mismanagement by the territory’s government and has drastically overstated the sums sent to the island in the wake of Hurricane Maria.
Puerto Rico, which is still trying to recover from the 2017 hurricane, would receive more than $1 billion under the package, according to a House Democratic aide. That includes $600 million in emergency funding for Puerto Rico’s food stamp program, as well as more than $300 million to help the island cover costs for infrastructure repair projects.
House Democrats ripped Roy for the additional delay. “After President Trump and Senate Republicans delayed disaster relief for more than four months, it is deeply disappointing that House Republicans are now making disaster victims wait even longer to get the help they need,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.) in a statement. “We must pass this bicameral, bipartisan bill and we will keep working to get it through the House and onto the President’s desk.”
Roy, when asked if Trump or House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had attempted to dissuade him from objecting, said he did not want to discuss private conversations.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/191-billion-in-nationwide-disaster-aid-stalls-in-house-after-single-republican-objects/2019/05/24/76a926ca-7e30-11e9-8ede-f4abf521ef17_story.html
2019-05-24 15:33:45Z
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